Month: October 2017

You have an important presentation at work in a few minutes and you have to stand before the entire board and give the analysis for the past quarter. Your heart starts beating loud, you breathe rapidly and you feel tense. There is a queasy feeling in your stomach and you start to sweat. These are... Continue Reading →

My family loves barbecue chicken so I am always trying to find new things to do with it. I had some leftover corn tortillas so BBQ Chicken Tostadas were a snap for dinner. Source: BBQ Chicken Tostadas – What's for Dinner Moms? These look good.

Morgan did not know much about Steve. He knew that Steve handled all the geek stuff at the Department and City Hall. He knew that Steve was a contractor. He met Steve three times in the seven years he was on the force. The first time was when he joined the Department and Steve guided... Continue Reading →

They have always said to stay away from the abandoned Sanctuary of St. Michael the Archangel especially after dark… especially on all hallow’s eve… especially the cemetery. Nobody knew why it sat deserted. Rumor said that one night the priests and nuns it housed disappeared without a trace. Nobody knew where they went; not even... Continue Reading →

"It's something I never really considered before... But now I don't think I'll do another book without it. I've created boards for different characters, settings and costuming. Any big element in my book, I have a board for it." Source: Video: How Authors Can Use Pinterest For Fiction Writing & Novels - Writer's Edit

There’s something delicious about creeping along a dark hallway with a character, feeling their terror as they grip their kid’s baseball bat with sweaty fingers. Something woke them from a deep sleep. Something not quite right. It could be the tree scratching against the window. It could be the cat. Source: Oh The Horror! 5... Continue Reading →

I've been going through about five or six novels that I believe to be psychological thrillers (Kindle Store does not make it easy to tell). From what I have seen, they all have female main characters and at some point in the story, they hook up with another character. Is this a general theme in... Continue Reading →

Despite Irma the dispatcher giving him directions that must have come from Google maps and the jitters that jolted his body along the bumps in the road, Morgan found the lone recreational vehicle in the middle of the desert just outside of the city. Cruiser with flashing blue and red lights and an ambulance sat... Continue Reading →

When black rats invaded Lord Howe Island after the 1918 wreck of the steamship Makambo, they wiped out numerous native species on the small Australian isle in the Tasman Sea including a big, flightless insect that resembled a stick. Source: DNA confirms amazing Australian isle insect not extinct after all

Daniel Parfitt thought he’d found the perfect drone for a two-day mapping job in a remote patch of the Australian Outback. The roughly $80,000 machine had a wingspan of 7 feet and resembled a stealth bomber. Source: Bold Eagles: Angry Birds Are Ripping $80,000 Drones Out of the Sky - cetusnews

Morgan sat in the driver’s seat of his cruiser and gripped his steering wheel. His knuckles turned white and his hands began to tremble. Not now… he thought to himself. They say that being a police officer is not a risky job. They look at numbers and come up with crazy notions that somehow it... Continue Reading →

Science has shown that we tend to make all sorts of mental mistakes, called “cognitive biases”, that can affect both our thinking and actions. These biases can lead to us extrapolating information from the wrong sources, seeking to confirm existing beliefs, or failing to remember events the way they actually happened! Source: Every Single Cognitive... Continue Reading →

After rumors and leaks, Google product chief Mario Queiroz today unveiled two new Android Oreo smartphones at the company’s annual hardware event: the Pixel 2 and the Pixel 2 XL. Available for preorder starting today, the two phones will see a staggered rollout. Source: Google unveils Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL with no headphone... Continue Reading →

Morgan dressed as fast as he could after he finished the phone call with the department. He was glad that call was over. It was the day dispatcher, Irma Glenn Murphy; aunt to Police Chief Jason Murphy. Even though he did not know her age, Morgan thought that the department needed to force her to... Continue Reading →

Hurricane Maria made landfall three weeks ago, but Trump is already complaining that Puerto Rico is tying up resources. The government keeps U.S. forces in foreign countries on the other side of the world carrying out dubious missions for more than a decade at enormous expense, but less than a month of using some military... Continue Reading →

Sitting in the DFW airport yesterday waiting for a connecting flight, texting on my smartphone, I reached out to a female friend who had defended Donald Trump in the wake of the “grab ’em by the p-ssy” tape that came out last fall. My friend told me then that she didn’t care, that she would... Continue Reading →

What Pew documents in this massive and important study is that Republicans and Democrats have never been further away from each other in terms of their ideological approach to the world. And there's very little evidence in the data that suggests the separation between the two parties will grow narrower any time soon. Source: Why... Continue Reading →

If you asked congressional experts what legislative subjects, say, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington specializes in, they’d have a few pretty good guesses: maybe education and health care — because she’s the ranking member on a key committee that oversees those issues. If you asked who else in the Senate shares her interests, you might... Continue Reading →

Morgan’s eyes opened suddenly to the sound of a klaxon next to his bed. His hand fumbled on the dark wood nightstand that was next to his bed. His hand chased the alarm clock until it fell to the floor. Instead of sitting up and turning the damn thing off, he just let it set... Continue Reading →

The keys on the keyboard clacked in the multi-hued glow from the monitor. Windows filled with event logs and log files covered the screen; a virtual haystack in which a virtual needle was hiding. Steve’s eyes darted from image to image on the screen. Finally, he sat back and rubbed his burning eyes. He glanced... Continue Reading →

Archaeologists believe they have found the key to unlocking a mystery almost as old as the Great Pyramid itself: Who built the structure and how were they able to transport two-ton blocks of stone to the ancient wonder more than 4,500 years ago? Source: Who Built Ancient Egypt’s Great Pyramid? Hidden Text Holds Clues to... Continue Reading →